


A Long Line of Love

by trekkiepirate



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Multi, because canon compliant with the end of season 4, but there's some sweet stuff and funny stuff too I promise, kinda a song fic, not a fix-it fic, plenty of angst, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trekkiepirate/pseuds/trekkiepirate
Summary: "I chose this song because I think about how long it laid, written in the notebook of a woman too shy to sing her own songs. How she wrote about the lifetime love of her ancestors and how it was discovered years later by her own descendants and now it became something mothers sing to their children and sweethearts sing to each other.” The performer straightened her spine. “’A Long Line of Love’ by Marlia.”Eliot’s hand stopped on the way to his mouth.“El?” Margo asked, having not seen him stop drinking since he got a chance to start.
Relationships: Arielle/Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Fen/Margo Hanson/Josh Hoberman, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, minor or implied for that last one
Kudos: 76





	A Long Line of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so... yeah, this is kinda a songfic, but to an original song. That is not even a song, just poetry set to a simple melody. Like a bard. So imagine a bard singing the song.
> 
> I just... I couldn't with no one really trying to help Eliot through Q's death, because at the end of last season it seemed like Margo knew (she apologized after saying she was gonna find her man, implying she knew it might be insensitive to talk about her relationship when Eliot had lost his love), then the beginning of this one, no one knows and I... I do not like the inconsistency of that. So Margo finds out, is the bottom line of this fic.

“Oh god, it’s open mic night,” Margo groused as she sipped her cocktail.

Eliot nodded and made a humming sound in this throat as a sign he had heard her speak.

They sat at the Fillorian bar they used to frequent, but neither Humbledrum nor Fray were there to recognize them.

Margo had hoped somehow they might be. Eliot had given up on hoping for anything since approximately sixty seconds after he woke up in Brakebills.

The barkeep was waving his arms for attention. “Now I hope you will all welcome our first performer, here to sing one of our greatest ballads of the last four centuries, though it was only discovered 150 years ago.”

The tavern began to stir, seeming to know what was coming.

“If we’re about to hear the Fillorian version of Margaritaville, I will literally kill someone,” Margo pursed her lips into a sneer.

Eliot sighed as he down the rest of his drink. “Let me get one more and we’ll head up to our room.”

“Hello,” a young woman waved as she stood on the small platform, clearing her throat. “Um, this is, of course, a very traditional ballad, so if you feel the urge to sing along, please do, I believe we all know the words. I chose this song because I think about how long it laid, written in the notebook of a woman too shy to sing her own songs. How she wrote about the lifetime love of her ancestors and how it was discovered years later by her own descendants and now it became something mothers sing to their children and sweethearts sing to each other.” She straightened her spine. “’A Long Line of Love’ by Marlia.”

Eliot’s hand stopped on the way to his mouth.

“El?” Margo asked, having not seen him stop drinking since he got a chance to start.

“It’s,” he shook his head. “It’s nothing, just an… odd name.”

Margo gave him one of her soul-piercing looks. “Fillory is filled with odd names.”

Eliot didn’t respond, watching the woman on the stage as she finished humming what he assumed was the song’s intro.

The Children of Earth, the Fool and the King,  
Come listen and the tale of their love I will sing  
Short and pretty was one, tall and handsome the other  
Family from the start, but much more than brothers.

The Mosaic Cottage they claimed as their own.  
Trading spells and tales of their faraway home.  
The lovely fruit seller, hair soft as a peach,  
Married one but the other was not out of reach.

All three they love and all three they raised  
A soft-hearted boy with magic in his veins.  
The peach girl got ill and soon after did die,  
While the Earth men and their still too young son did cry.

But he grew up surrounded by tiles and love,  
While his late mother watched from her seat high above.  
He left there to search for a new place to roam,  
Knowing they might not be there when next he went home.

But there they still lived, their son’s children they met.  
Fifty years placing tiles, a magic key to get.  
The King he died old, quietly in his sleep,  
His Fool found the key in the grave not yet deep.

The beauty of life is a good life went spent.  
To wait for his ending the fool was content.  
Quentin and Eliot their odd Earthen names.  
The Coldwater-Waughs and my name’s the same.

Though Poppa El died ere the day I was born,  
Grandpa Q kissed my head, then was gone by the morn.  
To follow his husband and his much missed wife  
To whatever awaits us in the time after life.

Having a life full of love, may we be blessed to do.  
Like the spectacular El and his beloved Q.

The crowd had began singing along halfway through and Margo turned her eyes to Eliot, frozen so still she wasn’t sure he was breathing. “That song, it’s about-“

Eliot stood and ran up the stairs to the room they had booked for the night, Margo paying for their drinks before following behind.

She found him on the bed nearest the door, bent low and sobbing.

“El,” she said, but couldn’t find any words of comfort.

“It didn’t even happen; it was a different timeline. How di- how?”

Margo shrugged, at a complete loss.

“My husband,” Eliot whispered through heaving sobs. “I lost my husband.” Even saying the word sent him into a new wave of crying.

Margo knelt at his feet and petted his head, stroking his hair until he spoke again.

“We never, not officially. We didn’t even say it, not often, not out loud. If I’d known,” Eliot’s words ran together, “I’d call him my husband every fucking day if I could go back. I died… I died first. I was supposed to die first. I can’t live in any world without Quentin.”

She hadn’t heard him speak Q’s name out loud since he woke up in the infirmary and asked for him. Margo would never be over the sound of anguish he made when she told him. She scrambled for anything to say, finally blurting, “Marlia?”

That seemed to snap Eliot’s attention back to her, startled as if he’d thought been speaking to an empty room. “Margo,” he said and took a shaking breath,” and Julia. Marlia. Q thought of it, he was so proud of himself. She was the first girl born in the family. Well soon to be born when I…” He blew out a heavy breath. “Junior’s wife, Fern, was about ready to give birth when I died. Q must have… for a few days or so. Just long enough to meet our great granddaughter. Marlia Coldwater-Waugh.”

“You did the hyphenated thing?” Margo asked, for lack of anything else to say as she processed what she was hearing. What she had heard downstairs. This new side of the person she thought she knew everything about.

“We decided we wanted a family name, so we all took it.” He smiled as if hearing something, “Eliot, Quentin, Arielle and Rupert Coldwater-Waugh, before Rupert insisted on being called Teddy because his middle name was too ‘old man’. God,” he huffed out something like a laugh. “He was such a little punk in his teenage years.”

“Tell me about him,” Margo said, wanting him to focus on something other than the lost potential of the present. Eliot was, for all intents and purposes, a widower. She knew he’d been in love with Quentin. She didn’t know this. “Tell me everything. Quentin managed to get himself married. How did he trick the poor girl into that?”

Eliot laughed. “She tricked him. Arielle,” he said her name reverently, “was the best. I loved her too. Less for her baby-making bits than for who came out of them, but we all loved each other completely.”

Margo smiled, glad that somehow in some time, her Eliot got a happy ending. “So your son, Teddy right? He left home, huh? I bet Q was a mess. Did he wave a handkerchief until he couldn’t see him anymore?”

El smiled, his eyes far away. “No, he was good. Some crying but he held it together pretty well. We went on a trip to Chatwin’s Torrent pretty soon after. I’d ripped up my leg pretty bad a week prior and my lungs were starting to give up the ghost. Arthritis was setting in for Quentin and we both needed our health to finish the Mosaic. No, no, he was a mess when Rupert, when Teddy went to his first day of school. Total basket case. I had to tie him down to stop him following the school carriage.”

“Hmm, kinky,” Margo mused. “I seem to hazily remember he liked being held down.” She felt a sob of her own rush to her throat and swallowed it back down. “Was he strict on sleepovers? Did he have to meet the other kid’s parents and stuff?”

“No god, by the time Rup- Teddy was old enough for sleep overs, we were all but shoving him out the door. Planning how many times we could have sex before he was due home. We broke records. Literally, some freaky Fillorian records. A Questing Creature brought us a cookpot that never burned the food inside. Q’s cooking significantly improved.”

Margo laughed. “I saw him make a quesadilla. I told him if I didn’t see him eat actual food, I’d carve dicks all over his wooden shoulder. Idiot picked it up out of the pan with his bare hands. Seemed so surprised when it burned his fingers.”

Eliot chuckled. “He did that with a fresh loaf of bread once. Arielle wouldn’t let me heal it. Said he needed to learn. He couldn’t cast for days and was such a grumpy dick that we locked him out of the cottage for the whole morning,” somewhere in the last half of the sentence, Eliot began to cry again. “I miss him so much.”

“I miss him too,” Margo sighed, pulling Eliot into her arms. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.” She thought of Josh and Fen, usurped 300 years ago. They probably… weren’t… they might still be… Her heart clenched and refused to think about this right now. “He died, like a couple days after you. Just enough time to kiss a baby and write a letter. Jesus, your husband and his dramatics.”

An involuntary gasp accompanied Eliot’s head tilting up to look at her.

She took his hand and kissed it. “Does that make it hurt more or less?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. I wish we were still just friends, sometimes. Just to make it all hurt one iota less.”

“Hey,” she cradled his head in her hands. “In one timeline, you got it right. You got to grow old and gray together. Started a long line of love like that song said. Does that help?”

Eliot smiled, but she saw it was fake, for her benefit. “A little, thanks Bambi.”

Margo nodded. “All right, we have no leads here, so I say we go to sleep. In the morning we’ll either figure shit out or get as drunk as we fucking can.”

Hear, hear,” Eliot said, already moving to lay back on the bed.

Margo curled up around him. “And if you want, I wanna hear the greatest hits of this Mosaic life.”

Eliot’s smile was small, but genuine. “So a year in, we’d gotten together. And I was having this no good, horrible, very bad day. And Q just… started singing. “Bad Romance” of all things. And dancing around. He wouldn’t stop for love nor blowjobs.”

“More willpower than I would have assumed he had. What did you do?”

“Threw tiles at him,” Eliot yawned. “Laughed at his terrible singing and dancing until everything didn’t seem so no good, horrible, very bad anymore. We learned these tricks when one of us got overwhelmed with… every-“

Margo lifted her had to confirm he’d fallen asleep. She looked out the window at the Fillorian sky, softly humming the melody of the ballad until she drifted off as well.

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda part of a small series I want to do about the Mosaic timeline and music. This would probably be the last in the series, as most take place at the Mosaic. The story Eliot tells as he falls asleep is the first.


End file.
